Leaf
by bevesy
Summary: Part 3 of the Fall Series. He remembered the victim, watching his little self advise her to be the leaf. He didn't think he'd care to follow his own words. But he finally understood.
**Leaf**

 _The Fall,_ Part III

* * *

 **Prompts –**

Murderer's Assistant

(Object) Knife

(Character) Meelo

(Restriction) No character names

 **Team / Position** – Kolau Komodo Rhinos / Waterbender

* * *

He felt numb.

Like daisies on a mountain peak, firelilies toasting up in the summer. He wanted to do something crazy, like bust a car and head on up to nowhere. Maybe the Cave of Two Lovers would be his next stop. That's a nice way to have a good time.

But he's standing outside of a restaurant with wads of yuan deep in the pit of his pockets. He just spent half on three prostitutes to go down on him. The classy kind, not the type who give diseases. He was his father's son after all.

He watched the chef slap a slab of meat on a grill. Knives slid by the blades and cut up the red flesh that would turn to food. Maybe this was a better way. A dirty brothel started to look good.

He had to walk through a garbage filled alley to reach there. He found a girl, taller than him with Earthbender eyes and dark hair. She looked heavier than what he's used too. But he watches the way the robe barely covered her milky cleavage and soft wide hips.

She smiled when he get their roach infested and dead spirited room. Spirit worlds had rodents too. He watched the way her breasts were round and rosy at the tips. No dark patch of hair. Her pearly teeth glimmer against the light as she grinned, "Ready?"

He pulled her down. She blew him and bounced over his crotch. Kept him there all night. He decided, this was what freedom felt like. A night blown away. Like the leaves in the skies.

All for half the price of a blowjob.

* * *

His head pounded when the telephone rang. He wanted to let it keep going but it still clawed head and forcing it out from under the pillow. Naked, he slid from bed and scratched at his stomach. He tugged gray sweat pants up and took the phone off its hook. A chill forced him to stop. He looked at the telephone in his hand and somehow knew who was on the other line.

It had been months since they last spoke, and when they did, he did her a favor. A favor that has made him scavenged for freedom in terrible forms. He committed the worst of sins. That's what he tried to forget. He pulled the phone up, "Yes?"

Static.

He could hear wind blowing and someone slamming a door. He waited for the soft clacks that came afterward to quiet down. The wind stilled, and a shuffle forced him to sit on the chair near his dresser. He focused on numbered buttons when the caller sighed.

"Are you alright?"

"…I'm okay. S'that why you're calling me?" he laughed.

He could imagine her crossing her legs and sitting on the edge of a bed. The bed she shared with the woman she killed, with his trusty help of course! "The Equalists were there. The police think they did it. I tweaked the car to make them think she took a wrong turn. Planted evidence downtown to turn it against them. He shouldn't suspect us."

He said nothing.

"Are you there?"

In the corner of his eye, he noticed a glint. He happened to stare at his kitchen. A knife stood in its wooden block, asking him to take it. He remembered something. _Be the leaf_. "I'm alright…no offense, but I don't want you to call me again."

He could hear the breath she took in, "A-alright. I'm sorry to be bothering you at this time. I just wanted you to know that everything will be fine-"

"I really hope that the reason you made me help you kill her was because of what you said," he said, stunned by the fact that his hands started trembling and the knife in the kitchen hissed, _Get up!_ His face burned with the hot tears rolling down his cheeks. "I don't do this! At all!"

"I know-"

"Stop saying you know!"

The line quieted. Chest thundering sounded like a stampede. Breath shuddered and hands began to sweat. He could hear her beginning to cry. Never did he think that when he met her, their end would happen this way. People like them were supposed to have happy endings. _They_ took down villains! They were the heroes, the ones people looked up to save the day.

"I don't care anymore," he said. "I don't give a _fuck_ if I get caught because I am nothing!"

"Please. There was no one elder to turn to…you understood," she sobbed. "You saw her with the cocaine on the table! We listened to her when we had dinner. You knew what she was turning into and you told me about it! I felt like someone finally got what I was going through. If we didn't do it, you know she would have killed again."

"She killed a villain who burned down an orphanage."

"No. We don't even know if he did it. We had no evidence. She didn't bother to go through the interrogation. She tortured him herself and killed him by herself! I saw her do it with nothing in her eyes. She didn't care anymore!" They both stood silent, swallowing up their own tears. "I had a dream. Aang told me that if I didn't do anything, she'd do worse. I saw it. Someone with that much strength could turn the world upside down."

He suddenly found himself standing in front of the table, watching him and the two of them laugh and eat their Komodo sausages, mochis and vegetables. Dried moonberries drizzled roasted fish like spots of blood. His younger self was listening to the victim speak.

"Republic City's gone a little loose, don't you think?" the victim asked with her teeth flashing, but he watched the young man with the Air suit and dark hair quiet down. "People from different nations pouring in, crime rising. Government leaders not doing their jobs. Come on. My lady doesn't believe me when I say this: you believe in order right? Complete supreme order?"

"Order? You never been the type to order someone around oh mighty Avatar?" he scoffed before laughing nervously.

This was the memory that shook him. Made him lose sleep and spend the night tossing and turning. The Avatar, his old friend, had stopped talking. His laughing vanished. She smiled and her blue eyes looked so wide that he shifted in his seat. A deadened grace made them as dull as a doll's haunting gaze. He never noticed this until now. His friend died inside a long time ago.

"You believe in one government, one rule," she said, "that makes things easier. Many governments and cultures make chaos. Nationalism in the world has to be stored. It's the only way to end crime. Doesn't that sound better than now?"

"You don't need to…" He had trailed off. Her wife was sitting on the left side, head bent over her food. He could feel her gaze, burning the food on the spot. He almost could hear it say, _Shut the fuck up!_ "Yeah...I agree. Makes things much easier."

The victim grinned, "Good! I knew you'd come around! This one here doesn't seem to agree."

"I just think that one rule in a world is a lot of work."

"Ha! Not with your skills," the victim laughed. "It's the best and only rule."

* * *

The knife told him to copy it. So he did. He sat by it and tried to bend air sharp enough to cut. He used his air knife instead of the real knife. The knife wanted him to practice. Strike fast and quick so that the pain will only last a split second.

He laughed when he cut up a lychee in quarters. All with a swipe of his hand. He has his radio on full blast. Reports on the car accident seeped into every part of paper thin walls in his apartment. He tried to speak along, but its hard trying to say something you didn't understand.

So he swiped the knife and twirled and air hovered all about. He moved till he got dizzy, but the knife told him to be patient. Not now. Not yet.

Ring!

By the time that damn phone rang again , he was in the middle of his living room naked, knife gleaming in hand. Then he realized that he just finished three bottles of sake.

"Yeah?!"

Static, "Hey big bro."

He paused. There was something off about the way his sister sounded. Her voice sounded like it had been wrung and dried several times. This was what his mother sounded like whenever she cried. The radio soon switched to the afternoon news. That's when he heard it: his name along with the sentence, "...could have been the Avatar's murderer."

His sister sniffed, "Did you do it?"

His door slammed open.

Suddenly, his house swarmed with officers in gray and black. Metal cuffs laced over his wrists. Someone swiped the knife out of his hand. His body thrashed about, he didn't fight. He laughed as he was dragged into the police truck, cuffed up and naked for the world to see.

Scratch that. _This_ was freedom.

Even when the man he has known since he was a child asked him about her in the interrogation room, he still felt that he could truly fly. Even though he was an airbender.

His friend trembled, "Don't lie to me. Not this time. Are you sure she did this?"

He blinked, like a fire hawk perched on a branch, "She did it. I just helped keep a secret."

He remembered the victim, watching his little self advise her to be the leaf. He didn't think he'd care to follow his own words. But he finally understood. Be the leaf.

"You knew she would put the poison in her tea."

He clicked his tongue, "Sure did."

 _Be the leaf!_

* * *

 _Next part: The Fall -_ Bloodbain Part IV by Serenity Saviour

s/11946873/1/The-Fall-BloodBain-IV


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